Description
Book SynopsisIn the 1920s, as American films came to dominate the country's cinemas, many of Mexico's cultural and political elites feared that this "Yanqui Invasion" would turn Mexico into a cultural vassal of the United States. In this book, the author contends that Hollywood films were not simply tools of cultural imperialism.
Trade Review“Because it deals with Mexican film culture from the teens to the early 1930s, Serna's fine book is a perfect complement to Robert McKee Irwin and Maricruz Castro Ricalde's
Global Mexican Cinema, which begins where this study leaves off. The early period was dominated by Hollywood films, representing an exciting, alarming modernity and exhibiting considerable insensitivity toward their neighbors to the south. Yet, as Serna (USC) demonstrates with admirable data and interpretive imagination, cinelandia was welcome to the politicians and capitalists who saw the distribution and exhibition of Hollywood films both as an opportunity and as evidence of post-revolutionary Mexico's movement into the modern age. . . . Recommended. All readers.” -- W. A. Vincent * Choice *
"Moving skillfully between Mexico City, El Paso, and Los Angeles, Serna shows how star-struck fans, ordinary filmgoers, and critics of U.S. films generated transnational articulations of Mexican identity." -- Cara Caddoo * American Historical Review *
“
Making Cinelandia transports its reader to new physical spaces and reveals a material culture perhaps as interesting as the rare or lost films themselves. … At hand is an interesting and well-written text, an effective transnational history suitable for the Latin Americanist or film scholar, the graduate student of either field, and, one hopes, the wider world of film buffs.” -- Charles V. Heath * Hispanic American Historical Review *
“Laura Isabel Serna's exhaustively researched and engagingly written
Making Cinelandia reconsiders the terms of scholarly debate on Latin American cinema and global film culture more broadly.” -- Rielle Navitski * New Mexico Historical Review *
“Laura Serna has written a groundbreaking study of the impact of US silent film on cinematic culture, in Mexico and among Mexican migrant communities north of the border during the interwar period. A film historian, Serna presents ideas that are both theoretically nuanced and meticulously documented. She gleans dozens of original insights from an astounding array of primary sources in Mexico and the US. . . . Serna’s book is an exemplary work of scholarship.” -- Patrick Duffy * The Americas *
"
Making Cinelandia is a ground breaking cultural history. It is admirable for the attention it pays to the performative, promotional, and cultural practices that were a part of moviegoing and for its extensive archival research across Mexico and the United States. It is original, thoroughly readable and accessible and, most significantly, it changes how we think about Mexican film culture in the twentieth century." -- Dolores Tierney * American Studies *
Table of ContentsA Note on Translations and Film Titles xi
Prólogo (Prologue) xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction 1
Part I. The
Yanqui Invasion 17
1. U.S. Motion Picture Companies Go South of the Border 19
2. American Movies, Mexican Modernity: The Cinema as a National Space 47
3. In Lola's House: Fan Discourse in the Making of Mexican Film Culture 85
Part II. Border Crossings 121
4.
La Virgen and
La Pelona: Film Culture, Border Crossing, and the Modern Mexican Woman 123
5. Denigrating Pictures: Censorship and the Politics of U.S. Film in Greater Mexico 154
6.
Al Cine: Mexican Migrants Go to the Movies 180
Conclusion 215
Abbreviations 223
Notes 225
Bibliography 279
Filmography 303
Index 309
